It’s that time of year again -- time for the Inside Self-Storage World Expo, which will be held from Wednesday, Sept. 29, through Friday, Oct. 1 in New Orleans. The ISS World Expo is a wonderful opportunity for self storage professionals to meet, network, and learn about issues ranging from everyday facility maintenance and management, to green building, to financing and legal issues. Dozens of self storage industry suppliers will also be present with product samples and information. [More]

Several free, educational self-storage webinars will be held next month. A webinar comes from the words "web" and "seminar." A webinar is a meeting or conference that is held over the Internet, usually for training or educational purposes.

The first upcoming self-storage webinar, "Capital Markets and Self Storage Market Overview," will be held on Feb. 18, from 1 p.m. to 2:20 p.m. CT. It will be hosted by Holliday Fenoglio Fowler (HFF), a commercial real estate capital intermediary with 17 offices all around the country. Holliday Fenoglio Fowler specializes in finding financing for real estate deals, averaging 3.8 closings per business day. Last October, HFF closed the sale of a nine-property Texas self-storage portfolio to Harrison Street Real Estate Capital. Over the summer, HFF closed the sale of two New Jersey self-storage properties. And at the beginning of 2009, HFF helped The Hampshire Companies to buy Berkeley Heights Self Storage, in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, by securing $6 million in financing. [More]

Equity Based Services (EBS) announced today that it has purchased two more self-storage facilities....The deal used a combination of equity and debt financing.

EBS financed the purchase in part with non-recourse loans, showing that non-recourse mortgages are still viable financing options within the self-storage market. Non-recourse loans are preferable to recourse debt when it is possible to obtain them. The debt financing, which was set up by Tavernier Capital Partners, came from a life insurance company.

The equity financing for the deal came from EBS' private investor pool and from the EBS Income Fund III, which was recently closed. The fact that EBS was able to arrange privately placed equity financing in addition to its mortgages shows that investors consider self-storage facilities to be strong, viable, low-risk businesses in which to invest. [More]